Wordless Wednesday - Windy

A Later Shade of Gold

And so it goes... Many trees in the Lanark highlands have already lost their leaves and fallen asleep in their leaf-strewn alcoves, but others are just starting to turn now. Still others hold their turning in abeyance until late in November, and we are always happy to see them on our rambles.

Whole hillsides of birch and lacy tamarack turn gold, and their foliage dazzles the eyes. When I remember their splendor in the depths of winter, the memory will leave me close to tears and hankering for a long trip on foot into the forests north of Lake Superior. No, not this year, perhaps next year...

Butternut trees are always the first to drop their leaves, but the great oaks along the trail retain their bronzey leaves well into winter, and native beeches are still wearing a delightful coppery hue. One of our favorite old maples puts on a magnificent golden performance at this time of the year, and we attend her one woman show with pleasure. While in her clearing, we remember to say thanks for her efforts to brighten a subdued and rather monochromatic interval in the turning of the seasons.

It has been a windy autumn, and we were delighted to discover this week that the north wind has not plucked Maple's leaves and left her standing bare and forlorn on the hill with her sisters. It (the wind, that is) has been doing its best, but the tree is standing fast. I would be "over the moon" if I could photograph or paint something even the smallest scrip as grand and elemental and graceful as Maple is creating in her alcove. Every curve and branch and burnished dancing leaf is a wonder, and the blue sky is a perfect counterpoint.

Writing this, I remembered that as well as being an archaic word for a scrap or fraction of something, scrip also describes a small wallet or pouch carried by medieval pilgrims and seekers. That seems fitting for our journey into the woods and the breathless standing under Maple in all her golden glory. Oh, to belong to the woodland sisterhood of tree and leaf...

Sequestered, Week 237 (CCXXXVII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

You cannot buy the revolution.

You cannot make the revolution.

You can only be the revolution.

It is in your spirit or it is nowhere.

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed

Gone to Seed

Friday Ramble - Edgy

This week's word has been around since the eleventh century, making its way to us through the Middle English egge, Old English ecg, Old French aiglent and Old Germanic ecke, all meaning "corner". It is also related to the Latin acer meaning "sharp", and the Greek akmē meaning "point". At the root of it all is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form ak- meaning "sharp". Kindred words in the English language include acerbic, acid, acrid, acumen, acupuncture, acute, eager, ester, exacerbate, hammer and selvedge as well as eglantine (sweetbriar), an old world rose known for its thorns.

An edgy time is this, for the old Celtic year has passed away, and we stand on the threshold of a brand new year, in the north a chilling contraption of fallen leaves and freezing earth, short days, darkness, frost and wind. This year, the weather is unseasonably warm, and many of the village children did their trick or treating last night in short sleeves (or no sleeves at all), but we were not fooled. Colder times are not far off. The short days and long nights are here to remind us.

The eastern Ontario highlands seem empty at this time of the year and rather lonesome. Except for Canada geese and a few intrepid herons, migratory birds have departed for warmer climes, and the lake seems still and empty. Most of our wild forest kin are already hibernating or are thinking about doing it.

On early morning walks, the long shadows falling across our trail have edges as sharp as the finest examples of the blade smith's craft. The earth beneath our boots is firm, leaves are crunchy, and some mornings, the puddles along our way are rimed with ice. For all the emptiness, morning sunlight changes the landscape into something rich and elegant and inviting: milkweed sculpted into pleasing shapes, bare trees twinkling like stars, the margins of blackberry leaves rosy and sparkling with frost or wetness. The air is fragrant with cedar, spruce and pine.

These weeks always seem chthonic to me. That engaging word with its bewildering arrangement of vowels and consonants springs from the Greek khthonios, meaning "of the earth", and it is usually employed in describing subterranean matters and deities of the underworld. In using the adjective, we focus on what is deeper or within, rather than on what is apparent at first glance or resting on the surface. Implicit in the expression are notions of rest, sleep, fertility and rebirth - entelechy, mortality and abundance coexisting and enfolding each other in a deep embrace.

Beau and I will celebrate this hallowed day with long walks, leaf blowing and gardening, with cups of Darjeeling and spicy munchies. We will plant garlic this afternoon as we always do on the first day of November. The weather is warm, so we (or rather I) will be in short sleeves. Happy Samhain, happy November! 

Happy Samhain (Halloween)

Thursday Poem - All Hallows Eve

Night of the void between the worlds,
night when the veil between the worlds is
stirring, lifting, when the old year shrivels and
fades, and the new year has not yet begun,

when light takes the form of darkness,
when the last light sinks into darkness
like spilled water, disappears in the leaves,
in the hot secret runs of earth underneath.

when grandmothers rise like mist, the silent
grandmothers with soft tongues of fog
in the ear, claiming nothing for themselves,
or complaining that they were abandoned,

when children go out clothed in darkness,
the children with sweet orange lips slip among
whispers, go out with wavering candles
among crosses and mossy eyes in stone,

when children go out in the mist, the
children tasting of candy, of carelessly
spilled dreams, the children like faraway
stars flaming into the soft folds of darkness.

Dolores Stewart (Riccio), from Doors to the Universe

Wordless Wednesday - Frosted

Along the Reeded Shore

Sequestered, Week 236 (CCXXXVI)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Oh, how can I say this: People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running day calendar. Wildness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd. It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence many future generations, we ought to choose carefully. Looking out on a clean plank of planet earth, we can get shaken right down to the bone by the bronze-eyed possibility of lives that are not our own.

 Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder

A Bin Full of Crows

Friday Ramble Before Samhain (Halloween)

Here we are again, nearing my favorite festive observance in the whole turning year. Next Thursday is the eve of Samhain, or in popular parlance, Halloween.

On morning walks, there's a chill in the air that cannot be ignored. Daylight arrives later with every passing day, and dusk makes an earlier appearance, village street lamps turning themselves on one by one, hours before they used to. The shorter days and longer nights are all too apparent to a crone's fierce and gimlet eye, at least to this crone's eye. How did we get here so swiftly?

The last days of October have a fleeting beauty all their own. In the great wide world, crops and fruit have been gathered in and stored, farm animals tucked into barns, stables and coops readied for the long white season. Rail fences wear frost crystals, and nearby field grasses crunch pleasingly underfoot. Native wild things are frantically topping up their winter larders and preparing warm burrows for winter.

The trees have already withdrawn into themselves for the long white season. Showers of red and gold leaves are falling, but the great oaks on my favorite hill are reluctant to part with their finery, and they are hanging on to every leaf. A north wind scours the wooded slopes and sweeps fallen fragments into rustling drifts and heaps. The air is spicy and carries the promise of deep cold days to come.

The coming festival (cross quarter day) marks “summer's end', the beginning of the dark half of the year. According to the old Celtic two-fold division of the year, summer was the interval between Beltane and Samhain, and winter the interval from Samhain to Beltane. It was also the gate between one year and another. For the ancestors, the old year ended at sunset on October 31, and a new year danced into being.

Some of us are enchanted by seasonal turnings in the Great Round and the old ways. Some of us love spooky "stuff", the fey, the mysterious and the unknown. Some like Halloween "clobber" and dressing up. Others are fascinated by the myriad ways in which the human species has measured the passage of time over the centuries.

The festival doings of the ancients celebrated pivotal cosmic points in their year, and Samhain was sacred to them. It was a fey interval in which the natural order dissolved back into primordial chaos for a brief unruly fling before regenerating, burnished and newly ordered for another journey through the seasons. They believed the veil between the living and the dead was thin on Samhain night, and that one's beloved dead could return for a visit. All the old festivals celebrate the cyclical nature of existence, but October 31st does so more than any other. 

Many dear ones have departed this plane of existence in recent years. While they were here, they walked through the world loving it fiercely, and they treasured its innate abundance and wildness, its grandeur, grace and reciprocity. Lit from within, they blazed with life and passion wherever they went, and they lighted up every room they entered—the rooms were always a little darker when they left. Somewhere beyond the here and the now, my departed loved ones are still alight, and I remember them. An altar is created for them at Samhain, and it becomes more crowded with every passing year. Places will be set for all at the old oak table on Thursday night.

Three cheers for trick-or-treating, tiny guisers and goblins on the threshold. What's not to love about witches, ghosts and goblins, grinning jack-o-lanterns, the colors orange and black? As I dole out treats to wee neighborhood friends next Thursday evening, I will reflect on the old year and tuck it thankfully away under a blanket of fallen maple leaves. I will think good thoughts about the cycle that is coming into being. I will remember that endings and beginnings are natural and ordained parts of earthly existence, not something to be feared.

Bright blessings to you and your clan. May your jack-o-lanterns glow brightly next week, and throngs of tiny costumed guests attend your threshold. May your home be a place of warmth and light, and your hearth a haven from things that go bump in the night. May there be laughter and merriment at your door, music and fellowship in abundance. May all good things come to you and your clan.

Thursday Poem - Fall

Are the leaves embarrassed by this sudden change
from serviceable green to gaudy red and gold?
All those colors clanging in the wind: copper,
bronze, brass. And when they all fall down
will the empty branches miss them? Or are they
comforted by the feathery touch of birds,
their pale claws and tiny beaks? In the meadow,
the goldenrod is waving goodbye, nodding
above the bracken, the pearly everlasting.
The corn’s already been taken; only stalks
and stubble remain. This is the season
of diminishing returns. And what will we do
with that hour we gain when the clocks turn
back? Will it rattle in our pocket, empty
as the moon? 

Barbara Crooker

Wordless Wednesday - Floating Home

View From the Shore

A perfect morning, quiet waters, nebulous sky and silvery morning light, drifting fog and reeds almost invisible in the day's embrace, maples reddening and aspens turning gold on the far shore of Dalhousie lake in the eastern Ontario highlands.

The rocks and hills away in the distance were merely indistinct smudges on the horizon, and I didn't need to see them or capture them with my lens. I remembered them from other autumns, and I could see them in my mind's eye. For all that, I thought I would capture an image or two anyway.

What more does one need on the trailing edge of a day in late October than this? A heron in the shallows would be grand, a loon or two calling from the center, a paddling of quackers or a skein of geese? Perhaps an eagle or an osprey describing circles in the sky overhead? No, everything that matters is already here.

Foggy October mornings are wonders, complete within themselves, and they have no need of embellishments. It would be an insult to Herself to squander such gifts, to waste time pining for things one wishes were present, but are not. To do such a thing would be rude and thoughtless. It smacks of arrogance and ingratitude. 

Sequestered, Week 235 (CCXXXV)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

Scarlet, Lightly Fallen

Friday Ramble - The Hunter's Moon of October

In October, Lady Moon is often veiled by drifting clouds, and sometimes we don't see her for several nights in a row. If Luna seems spooky, it is not surprising, given the inky darkness into which she rises at this time of the year, and the fact that Samhain (or Halloween) is only two weeks away. This month's full moon looks brighter because the sun's apparent path across the sky (the ecliptic) is lower in late autumn.

This is a wonderful (in the original sense of the word) time for moonhearts, stargazey people and backyard astronomers, for we are entering the fabulous region of the winter stars. Hallelujah, there is more darkness for sky watching, and one doesn't mind staying up all night or rising in the wee hours of the morning because there are wonders to be seen from one horizon to the other.

October is the month of the annual Orionid meteor showers, one of my favorite astronomical happenings in the whole turning year. Throwaway children of Halley's comet, the Orionids are visible all month long, and this year they will peak on October 20-21 when the earth moves directly into the most densely populated region of the comet's ancient particle field. Hallelujah, we are about to have a ringside seat to the greatest cosmic light show of them all, torrents of shooting stars (meteroids) streaming across the eastern sky in the hours before dawn. Who knows, some of the particles rocketing around up there may be kin to my own star stuff. 

As Beau and I shivered in the garden last evening there were no two ways about it - summer has crept away, autumn has settled in, and winter is not far off. Oh, there are splendid sunny days now and then, but nights are cold for the most part, and the wind has icy fingers after dark. Many trees have already lost their leaves, and their bare branches form an austere architectural backdrop for the moon in her journey. A tapestry of stars spangled the night sky, and there it was, a luminous, golden full moon, the last supermoon of this calendar year, and absolutely magnificent.

We also know last night's fabulous moon as the: Acorns Cached Moon, Banksia Moon, Bare Branches Moon, Big Chestnut Moon, Big Wind Moon, Blood Moon, Chrysanthemum Moon, Corn Ripening Moon, Drying Grass Moon, Falling Leaves Moon, Frosty Moon, Hallows Moon, Joins Both Sides Moon, Kantlos Moon, Kindly Moon, Leaf Falling Moon, Leaf Dance Moon, Leaves Change Color Moon, Maple Moon, Michaelmas Daisy Moon, Middle-finger Moon, Migration Moon, Moon When Birds Fly South, Moon of Poverty, Moon When Geese Leave, Moon of Changing Seasons, Moon of Harvesting, Moon When Deer Rut, Moon of Acorn Gathering, Moon When Corn Is Taken In, Moon of Falling Leaves, Moon That Turns the Leaves White, Moon of First Frost, Moon When They Store Food in Caches, Moon of Long Hair, Moon When Quilling and Beading Are Done, Moon When the Water Begins to Freeze on the Edge of Streams, Nut Moon, Pekelanew Moon, Raking Moon, Samhain Moon, Shedding Moon, Small Trees Freeze Moon, Song Moon, Striped Gopher Looks Back Moon, Strong Moon, Ten Colds Moon, Travel in Canoes Moon, Trees Felled by Fire at Butt Moon, Trout Moon, Turkey Moon, Vintage Moon, White Frost on Grass Ground Moon, Wild Turkeys Moon, Wilted Moon, Wine Moon, Winter Coming Moon

Thursday Poem - At the road's turning, a sign

Stranger, you have reached a fabulous land―
in winter, the abode of swans,

magnolia buds and black leaves

secretly feeding the earth―

memory snaked into tree roots.

In spring, you will feel life changes

bubble up in your blood like early wine,

and your heart will be lighter than

the flight of gossamer pollen.

Stranger, in summer, you will drink deeply

of a curious local wine,

fortified with herbs cut with a silver knife

when the moon was new.

Who knows what freedoms

will dazzle your path like fireflies?

And I promise you, in the fall

you will give up the search and know peace

in the fragrance of apple wood burning.

You will learn how to accept love

in all its masks, and the universe

will sing here more sweetly than any other place

Dolores Stewart (Riccio) from The Nature of Things

Wordless Wednesday - Held

Hitching a Rosy Ride

Sequestered, Week 234 (CCXXXIV)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the world

There are ways in, journeys to the center of life, through time; through air, matter, dream and thought. The ways are not always mapped or charted, but sometimes being lost, if there is such a thing, is the sweetest place to be. And always, in this search, a person might find that she is already there, at the center of the world. It may be a broken world, but it is glorious nonetheless.

Linda Hogan, The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir

October in Tangerine and Teal

Friday Ramble - Hibernate

This week's offering hails from the Latin hībernātus, past participle of the verb hībernāre (to spend the winter) and the noun form hiems (snowstorm, winter). Both are related to the Greek cheimá (winter) and Sanskrit hima (cold, frost or snow). All of the above likely originated in the Proto Indo-European (PIE) root forms ghei-, ghi-, and ghimo- meaning snow or winter. Our word is kin to the mightiest mountains on earth, the Himalayas. The name of that range is a combination of the Sanskrit hima (snow) and alaya (abode), thus meaning "the abode of snow" in that language.

Most birds in the northern hemisphere migrate south for the winter, but other species of wildlife go dormant and sleep through the long white season. During this time, their body temperatures, metabolic rates, breathing and heartbeats slow down, and we refer to the process as hibernating or overwintering. Bears exhibit an elegant and impressive physiology as they hibernate through the winter in leaf-strewn dens. Squirrels, prairie dogs, groundhogs, bats and hedgehogs den up when outdoor temperatures fall, sleeping until temperatures rise. Northern frogs, toads, snakes and turtles are masters of the art of hibernation too.

Humans "do" hibernation too, and we do it in various ways. Some of us migrate to warmer climes to escape ice and snow and cold, but most of us simply withdraw from the outside world to warm dens of our own. Our protocols for getting through the long white season are highly personal. We retrieve shawls, sweaters and gloves from cedar chests, accumulate stacks of books, munchies and music. We kindle fires in fireplaces, pull the draperies closed and surround our winter selves with things that are warm, embracing, spicy and redolent of comfort. For me, mugs of tea and a favorite shawl in deep, earthy red are the right stuff.

I buy more cookbooks between now and spring, make endless pots of tea, cauldrons of soup and casseroles. I listen to classical music and good jazz, pose still life camera compositions on tables and window sills, pile up leaning towers of reading material. The books are usually hardcovers - there is something comforting about holding the real thing in one's hands, the cover art, the way the thick creamy paper feels, the smell of the ink, the illustrations and the typefaces. A beautifully designed book is a work of art, and I wish more of such things were published.

I can get totally caught up in the color of a morning cuppa, and I try to resist the temptation to add cinnamon sticks, anise stars and cardamom pods to anything I brew or stir up in the kitchen. From the depths of the pantry, the makings of fiery curries, vindaloos and silky kormas exert a sovereign tug at the senses that is difficult to ignore. It is almost impossible to pass trees, hedgerows and drifts of fallen leaves in the village without getting lost in their golds and reds and bronzes.

Hibernation also means wandering around with a camera and not staying indoors, trying to capture the light of the sun as it touches clouds, contrails and migrating geese, sparks across frost dappled fields, farm buildings and old rail fences. It's a meditative process holding out stillness and tantalizing glimpses of something wild, elusive and elemental. Ice, frost, snow and the paucity of light notwithstanding, it's all good, and something to be treasured. Every view is a wonder and no two images are ever the same, even when they were captured in exactly the same place.

Thursday Poem - This Time of Year

when the light leaves early, sun slipping down
behind the beech trees as easily as a spoon
of cherry cough syrup, four deer step delicately
up our path, just at the moment when the colors
shift, to eat fallen apples in the tall grass.
Great grey ghosts. If we steal outside in the dark,
we can hear them chew. A sudden movement,
they're gone, the whiteness of their tails
a burning afterimage. A hollow pumpkin moon rises,
turns the dried corn to chiaroscuro, shape and shadow;
the breath of the wind draws the leaves and stalks
like melancholy cellos. These days are songs, noon air
that flows like warm honey, the maple trees' glissando
of fat buttery leaves. The sun goes straight to the gut
like a slug of brandy, an eau-de-vie. Ochre October:
the sky, a blue dazzle, the grand finale of trees,
this spontaneous applause; when darkness falls
like a curtain, the last act, the passage of time,
that blue current; October, and the light leaves early,
our radiant hungers, all these golden losses.

Barbara Crooker, from Radiance

Wordless Wednesday - Fenced